Dumbarton Oaks Makes Irfan Shahid's Mastetpiece Available for Free Download

After Irfan Shahid died in 2016, I lamented the fact that his multi-volume life's work, Byzantium and the Arabs, and its "Prolegomenon," Rome and the Arabs, were in several cases out of print (and not inexpensive when available).

Well, there's great news for anyone interested in the Arabs in Late Antiquity or the pre-Islamic context of the rise of Islam (especially the Ghassanids): Dumbarton Oaks has made all seven of the volumes available for free download.

If you have any interest in the subject, download them all now.

The Arab World and Internet Porn

There's little to surprise in what follows, but here's another piece about how the Arab world is so eager to defeat the scourge of pornography on the Internet, that they spend more time debating that than, say, saving the Egyptian economy; and yet when it comes to actual searches for porn, the Arab world seems to lead the pack. I have no brief for hard-core pornography but know that every new medium from hieroglyphics and cuneiform to woodcuts, daguerreotype photography, early movies, and so on down the line, the dirty stuff is often among the early adopters. One  can stand at the shore and tell the tide to recede, or actually teach people to avoid the viler stuff. But that's harder than passing laws telling the tide it's illegal (Acts of King Canute I, 1.)

This piece tells us what everybody knew already, but with cooler charts: "Porn in the Middle East – The Elephant in The Room."


Excerpts:

The Arab world undoubtedly has a mixed relationship when it comes to the Internet’s vast treasure trove of adult material. A recent survey conducted by Northwestern University in Qatar found that, from a sample of 10,000 respondents across eight Arab states, the majority was in favour of tighter Internet regulation. Meanwhile, the regular cautionary tales fabricated by local media wheel out a motley selection of ‘experts’ who warn that viewing explicit images will lead to a rise in mental illness, violent crime, and the spread of “sexual deviancy”, for which read homosexuality.

And, undeterred by the overwhelming evidence that such policies are always destined to fail, governments continue to announce plans to block access to X-rated websites, often with large scale public support. In 2011, when many thought the days of Ben Ali-style censorship were coming to an end, a Tunisian court decreed that porn sites would henceforth be banned, as they “contravened the values of Arab Islamic society.” And just a few months before its overthrow, the Islamist government of Muhammad Morsi in Egypt thought nothing of dedicating endless hours to discussing a new $3.7 million anti-porn initiative. Clearly they didn’t think their country had bigger priorities.

But while people may publically express their aversion and opposition to Internet pornography, their private viewing habits suggest something quite different. Put simply, porn is BIG in the Arab world. According to Google AdWords, the 22 Arab states account for over 10% of the world’s searches for “sex”; A total of 55.4 million unique monthly Google “sex” searchers in the 22 (ignoring a further 24 million searches for “sex” transliterated into Arabic) that matches both the United States and India, two countries often cited as world leaders in porn consumption. . . .

. . .It also seems to be the case that viewing porn in the region is not simply big in absolute terms, but also relatively to all other things people search. Data obtained from the Internet analytics company Alexa shows that adult-themed sites account for seven of the 100 most visited websites in the US, a figure that is trumped by at least six Arab states – Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen. Meanwhile, Google Trends, which shows how many searches for a particular keyword are made relative to all searches on Google, suggests that people in the region are more likely to search for “sex” than almost anywhere else in the world, with the exception of the Indian Sub-Continent.

. . . Even more revealing is the breakdown of the actual keywords people are searching for. While fairly generic searches for “tits” (including البزاز) and “lesbians” (including السحاق) amount to around 895,000 and 718,000 times per month (with the highest number on a per user basis again coming from Iraq) more extreme fetish keywords appear to be far more popular.  Searches for “animal sex” and “incest” (in both English and Arabic) occur on average 1.03 million and 1.18 million times per month across the region, equating to more than one search per 100 Internet users.

And by searches:

Of course, the article notes the obvious hypocrisy, the tendency by Salafis to blame the West for trying to corrupt Islam, quotes Shereen El Feki and otherwise tells us what pretty much everybody knew or suspected.

Sexual frustration tends to encourage a search for any outlet. While I won't say that no one with a healthy sex life ever goes trolling for porn (even couples may, I suppose), I suspect the frustrated do so in greater numbers.

King Canute is still waiting for the tide to obey him.

Lost in the Dueling Nationalist Mythologies: The Forgotten Syrians at Gallipoli

When I posted my November 11 post and mentioned Mustafa Kemal's 19th division at Gallipoli, a commenter reminded me that a lot of the fallen on the "Turkish" side were actually Arabs. In fact, two of the three regiments constituting Kemal's famous 19th Infantry Division, the 72nd and 77th Infantry Regiments, were recruited in Syria. The division that would help propel Kemal to great fame and the title of "Father of the Turks" may have been as much as two-thirds Arab and Kurdish. The third of the regiments in Kemal's Division, the 57th, was apparently recruited in European Turkey and may have included minorities of Balkan background. Because Kemal took command of the 19th Division during the battle, it is justly famous, but apparently at least one other regiment on the Gallipoli Peninsula was raised around Aleppo. (Much of the literature, both in print and online, is in Turkish, which I do not, alas, read at all.)

Kemal at Gallipoli

Now, I have deliberately referred to these troops as "Syrian," in the title rather than as Arabs. Many seem to have been Kurds. Since there is reason to believe at least the 77th Regiment and perhaps the 72nd as well were from northern Syria, still an area with Turkish, Turcoman, and Kurdish population as well as Arab. I've seen statements I can't confirm that the 77th included many Yazidis and Nusayris (what we today call ‘Alawites). The latter are Arabic speakers, but most Yazidis speak Kurdish; both are religious minorities. Ottoman Complaints that the 72nd and 77th were hard to train (some from Kemal himself) may relate to the conscripts' poor command of Turkish.

There also appear to be no records detailing the ethnicity of Ottoman conscripts. It is known that the Ottomans, even before the Arab Revolt broke out, preferred to station troops from the Arab provinces in Anatolia, the Caucasus, or European Turkey, and put ethnic Turks in Syria, Mesopotamia, and Arabia, for fairly obvious reasons. (Many were forcibly rounded up and were hardly serving willingly.) Though there were exceptions.

Some modern Turkish historians have begun to take an interest in this subject, but for decades it has been buried under Kemalist mythology: The Turkish Republic glorified the Turkish language and ethnicity, sometimes to ridiculous extremes (the "sun language" idea, claiming all languages descend from Turkish; or insisting on calling Turkey's Kurds "mountain Turks"). Mustafa Kemal began his rise up the high command ladder commanding the 19th Division at Gallipoli: after he became Kemal Atatürk, "Father Turk" himself, it was unthinkable to mention that his own division was two-thirds non-Turkish.

You might think that while Republican Turkey naturally dropped this fact down the memory hole, Arabs would have sought to preserve it. But not so. It did not fit with the mythology of Arab nationalism, either. The Great Arab Revolt was a universal Arab uprising against their Ottoman oppressors which (with maybe just a little help from the British) brought down the Ottoman Empire. Though this originated essentially as a Hashemite version of history, it became pretty general, and nobody was going to glorify Arabs in Ottoman service.

The Ottomans were proud of their multi-ethnic empire which, like Austria-Hungary's, was doomed to fall in that war, though from 1905 the "Young Turks" had been emphasizing Turkish ethnicity. Perhaps as many as a third of the Ottoman Army came from the Empire's Arab provinces, and right up to the Mudros Armistice there were more Arab troops in Ottoman uniform than the Arab Revolt could ever command, but their service fell victim to the dueling nationalisms of Turkish and Arab national myth, and so they were too inconvenient to be remembered.

The Arab role in the Ottoman Army has been a particular interest of Salim Tamari, the Palestinian historian, though his work is not focused on Gallipoli. His book Year of the Locust: A Soldier's Diary and the Erasure of Palestine's Ottoman Past (which I have not read) translates three war diaries, focusing on that of a private from Jerusalem (publisher's page here; Amazon link here; also see an article by Tamari in The Jerusalem Quarterly called "The Short Life of Private Ihsan: Jerusalem 1915"). For articles dealing more directly with Gallipoli, see Al Jazeera English, "The Forgotten Arabs of Gallipoli," and Robert Fisk in The Independent, "Great War Secrets of the Ottoman Arabs."

I intend to do more research on this subject, and will share what I learn.

The Debate Over Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi's Article on Gulf Cities

A week ago, the Dubai-based Emirati journalist and commentator Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi published an article at Al-Monitor called "Gulf Cities Emerge As New Centers of Arab World."  The article has provoked considerable debate online and elsewhere. I think he knew he was throwing a fox into the henhouse from the beginning. He opened the article with these paragraphs:

An old Arab saying goes, “Cairo writes, Beirut publishes and Baghdad reads.” These three capitals, along with Damascus, were long the hubs of culture and education in the Arab world. Arabs from across the region flocked to these cities to study and work. Sculptures such as the 1958 Monument of Freedom in Baghdad by the great Iraqi artist Jawad Salim and "Egypt's Renaissance," unveiled in 1928 in Giza by the pioneering artist Mahmoud Mokhtar, embodied the ambitions of these Arab cities.

However, over the past few years, as these traditional Arab capitals became more embroiled in civil strife, a new set of cities started to emerge in the Gulf, establishing themselves as the new centers of the Arab world. Abu Dhabi, its sister emirates of Dubai and Sharjah and the Qatari capital, Doha, have developed as the nerve center of the contemporary Arab world’s culture, commerce, design, architecture, art and academia, attracting hundreds of thousands of Arab immigrants, including academics, businessmen, journalists, athletes, artists, entrepreneurs and medical professionals. While these Gulf cities may be unable to compete with their Arab peers in terms of political dynamism, in almost every other sense they have far outstripped their sister cities in North Africa and the Levant.

Needless to say, to Arab intellectuals steeped in the histories of Cairo and Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad, the idea that nouveaux cities like Dubai and Doha are supplanting them is anathema.  One of the first broadsides came from The Angry Arab himself, As'ad AbuKhalil, who true to his usual form minced no words:

What contribution to Arab culture have those cities made, unless you are talking about sleaze, worship of the European, denigration of the Asians, promotion of singers purely based on breast sizes and lip thickness, prostitution mentality (literally and figuratively), gender segregation and repression, the culture of measuring humans by the size of their bank accounts, etc.  Culture, what culture? Cairo and Beirut were known for hosting a culture that allowed (often despite desires of the ruling governments) various political and cultural trends to co-exist and to clash, and for the expression of divergent political viewpoints.  Cairo and Beirut were cities that allowed artists and writers to seek refuge and to express themselves artistically and creatively, and there is none of that in the Gulf.  Yes, academics and journalists are flocking to the Gulf but what have they produced there? What ideas? They go there and they work as assistants and propagandists in the entourage for this prince or that prince.  If anything, the impact of that Gulf oil and gas culture has been quite corrosive on the entire Arab world and its culture.  In that sense alone, yes, Gulf cities do play a role.

Oh, go ahead, tell us what you really think.

In Al-Monitor, the same venue that hosted Qassemi's original article, Abbas al-Lawati responded with a more nuanced assessment, "Gulf States Have Long Way to Go Before Leading Arab World," noting the expatriate nature of so much of Gulf culture:

What makes these Gulf cities so distinct is that each of them, unlike their northern Arab counterparts, arose after the advent of the nation-state, which by nature restricts immigration and imposes a relatively narrow definition of who does or does not belong. The emergence of the Gulf nation-states in the early 1970s effectively slammed the brakes on centuries of migration that led to a level of diversity in these cities that is still there under the surface. National identity was homogenized to make these new nations viable, and nationality — the right to belong —- was restricted to the small group of people whose ancestors had ventured toward these harsh lands from across the region. Any migrants from that point onward were considered guests who would eventually have to go home . . .

In the academic arena, in order to gain fast access to the global stage, these cities have in recent years begun large-scale importing of big-name Western academic institutions that may boast glitzy and high-tech campuses, but cannot guarantee the academic freedom of their Western counterparts. Even more worrying is the transformation these institutions are bringing to the linguistic landscape of these cities through educational reform. Almost every one of these new universities uses English as the language of instruction, and schools, from the primary stage to high school, are in turn expected to adjust their curricula to prepare students for an English-language tertiary education. These cities may be on their way to becoming the Arab world's education hubs, but there's little about them that remains Arab . . .

Today, in each of the cities that were cited as the new Arab centers, foreigners vastly outnumber citizens. Like the traditional Arab capitals, they have become hubs for migrants. The difference is that migrants in the Gulf have residency cards with expiration dates. It is therefore unrealistic to expect Gulf cities to grow to the level they wish if the majority of the population is transient and continuously reminded that it will one day have to leave. Someone who does not feel a sense of belonging will not invest his or her full potential in such a city.

M. Lynx Qualey at the Arabic Literature (in English) blog has a post "Are Gulf Cities the New Capitals of Arab Literature?" The Cairo-based Qualey, while recognizing the influence of the Abu Dhabi Book Fair and Gulf publishing ventures, isn't completely buying it either:

Gulf cities are formidable, certainly. But will they be forces of major scientific and artistic innovation? And, moreover, why would Gulf authors develop their literature in Arabic when so many of the institutions of higher learning teach in English?

Qassemi himself has noted these, and a couple of other, reactions to his original article on his own blog.

It's worth reading all sides in this debate; the contrasts between the old capitals and the new, the old culture and the new, are going to be features of the Middle East over the coming generation.

Wilson Center's Assessment of Two Years of Arab Spring

As I previously noted, yesterday marked two years since Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation that began what we call "Arab spring" (though it may be feeling a bit wintry these days). The Wilson Center has published a collection of commentary from a variety of scholars, asking, "Has the Arab Spring Lived Up to Expectations?"  (That link is the home page; full text in PDF is here.)

Arabs Studying Yiddish?

I'll have more later today but have a lot of pressing business first, so I'll start your day with this piece about Arabs studying Yiddish from Al-Monitor, translated from a Hebrew original at Yediot Aharanot.

Not Hebrew, mind you, Yiddish, long frowned upon by many Israelis as the language of the European ghetto and long ago eclipsed by Hebrew. The story is at the link, but there's also an irony in that the Arab (need I say he's an Israeli Arab?) discussed first is studying Hebrew literature at Bar-Ilan University, originally founded to combine Jewish religious studies with a secular curriculum at a time when the religious current in Israel was much less strong than it is today.

The Life, and 222-Year Extended Afterlife, of the Maria Theresa Dollar

Maria Theresa as She Was

The Empress Maria-Theresa of Austria-Hungary (Kaiserin Maria-Theresia in German) was the only Empress in the Austrian Hapsburg dynasty as Holy Roman Empress and Archduchess of Austria; her 40 year reign (1740-1780) and 16 children guaranteed her a role in European royal genealogies and various 18th century wars.  But at least outside of the former Austria-Hungary, that is not how she is best known today. The standard silver coin of her reign, the Austrian thaler was considered a standard and stable unit of currency,and was coined throughout her reign. (The choice of "dollar" as the name of the currency of the new United States was certainly influenced by the reputation of the thaler.) Then she died in 1780. But her coinage did not.

As the Middle East Knows Her

As late as 2002, the Austrian mint struck a special production of coins with her image and the date 1780. They weren't counterfeit, and other mints across Europe had struck similar coins with the image of a long-dead Empress and the date 1780 during the 222 intervening years since her death, quite legally if the silver content was correct. Britain was the last to cease regular minting in the early 1960s. In Africa and the Middle East the Maria Theresa "Dollar" (riyal nimsawi or "Austrian riyal" in Gulf Arabic) was the standard "trade coinage" acceptable in the souqs of the whole region, the trusted silver coin. The long-dead Empress and her familiar buxom profile, the Hapsburg double eagle on the back, and the date of 1780 were more reliable than the coinage of local rulers, Ottoman Sultans, or colonial powers. The UK minted them since its Gulf dependencies long preferred them to Sterling. The British counterfeiting laws made counterfeiting Maria Theresa Thalers just as illegal as counterfeiting British sovereigns.

This 2003 article in Saudi Aramco World gives a good summary of the coin's career in the Gulf. An excerpt:

And wherever it was used, the coin was subjected to careful scrutiny. "Locals would count the number of pearls on Maria Theresa's oval brooch, or check the feathers on the imperial eagle. (These were the features that the names abu nuqta and abu reesh refer to.) Recipients would reject coins out of hand if they did not precisely match the original 1780 strike," explains Semple.

"Semple" is Clara Semple, whose book,  A Silver Legend: The Story of the Maria Theresa Thaler sounds fascinating,  though from its current Amazon listing appears to be unavailable, at least at my budget. A good review of the book in The Guardian, however, does open with a good story:

At Talh market in northern Yemen, I once watched an old man pay for a fresh clip of Kalashnikov ammunition with some weighty silver coins. Neither Yemeni or Saudi riyals, these reassuringly hefty discs were date-stamped 1780 and bore the image of a large busty woman on one side, an impressively feathery eagle on the other. They were silver dollars of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the woman was Maria Theresa, empress from 1740 to 1780.

Despite generous offers from the market-trader to sell me various machine guns, bazookas and even a tank ("only two days to deliver!"), I bought the money from him instead, paying a small premium to avoid some obvious forgeries. Little did I know that in some senses all the coins were forgeries, and a bright copy made in the sands of Talh the day before was at least as interesting as my supposed originals. Those, as Clara Semple points out in her intriguing book, could easily have been minted in Birmingham in the 1950s, or Brussels, London, Paris, Bombay, Rome or Vienna at some time in the previous two centuries - almost all had that 1780 date. As for rarity, around 400 million are known to have been issued in that period.

The review concludes:

These days the use as a trade currency is all but gone. Gold has replaced silver as the jewellery metal of choice and the American dollar as the currency. The generous bosom of Maria Theresa is only found in tourist bazaars and antique jewellery. To my intense pleasure, however, the last photograph in this delightful book is of that Yemeni market at al-Talh, a trader surrounded - just as I remember - with rifles, pistols and piles of Maria Theresa dollars. For a splendid moment I was back there, reliving my fantasy of becoming the first, and last, man to buy a T-64 Soviet tank with an 18th-century treasure trove.

 I'm not sure if he'd have been the first, and given the current situation in Yemen (the review is from 2006), I'm not sure no one has bought a T-64 with Maria Theresas by now. Silver is still silver.

There are earlier instances of currency strikes that continued long beyond the death of the monarch. One that may have endured even longer than Maria Theresa are the coins of Alexander the Great, though they were not copied with either the fidelity or the reliability of the content of their specie as the Maria Theresa. Bad copies of Alexander's  coins were still being circulated in Nabataea and Arabia (and even in Italy), areas he never even conquered, centuries after his death.

Lynch on the Resilience of the Monarchies

Just last month we talked about reasons for the resilience of Arab monarchies; today Marc Lynch offers some cogent thoughts on the subject. Read him and follow his links.

Easy Lies the Head That Wears a Crown: Why Are the Monarchs Surviving as the Republics Fall?

I'm on vacation. As I did last year, I've prepared a series of posts ahead of time on historical, cultural, and linguistic topics that are not time-constrained. If events warrant, I will add current posts, but at least one new post will appear daily in my absence. Enjoy.

Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Henry IV, Part II


For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there thE antic sits,

Richard II, Act 3, Scene 2

Shakespeare's troubled kings do not find models among the crowned heads of the Middle East (though in an earlier era the late King Hussein of Jordan, or his ghostwriters, wrote a book entitled Uneasy Lies the Head). In the last decade, the heads of almost every mainstream Arab republic has been toppled or is on the verge of it:

Iraq: Saddam Hussein, toppled 2003, subsequently executed
Tunisia: Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, toppled 2011, in exile
Egypt: Husni Mubarak, toppled  2011, imprisoned
Libya: Mu‘ammar Qadhafi, toppled 2011, killed while fleeing
Yemen: ‘Ali ‘Abdullah Salih, negotiated out of office
Syria: Bashar al-Asad, fighting a civil war he appears to be losing
Sudan: ‘Umar al-Bashir, engaged in the early stages of an Arab Spring-type revolt

With the exception of Lebanon, the debatable "Algerian exception," and rather marginal states like Mauritania and Djibouti, Arab republics have either undergone dramatic transitions or are in the process of them.

The Kings, Amirs and Sultan are another matter. One might edit Shakespeare: in the Middle East, Easy Lies the Head That Wears a Crown. Not one monarch has fallen, at least not since the overthrows of the Libyan monarchy in 1969 and the Iranian Shah in 1979. Only Bahrain's throne has truly been in jeopardy, saved by Saudi intervention. Saudi Arabia, Oman, Jordan, Morocco, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE and Iran have faced some demonstrations and challenges, but of these only Jordan, and the aforementioned Bahrain, seem to have even had much worry. A fair amount has been written about a "Moroccan exception," but it's true of the other monarchies, again Bahrain excepted, as well.

Of course everyone knows that some of the richer states, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, have all used their oil revenues to provide lavish welfare states for their people, and have increased the flow whenever protest reared its head. But not all the Gulf states, and certainly not Jordan or Morocco, can turn on the oil largesse at will. So is the common ground really monarchy? Does the Divine Right of Kings (and Amirs and a Sultan) trump popular will?

If you're reading this expecting a clear cut answer, I don't have one. The monarchies are enormously different from each other. Morocco has had a unified state since the Middle Ages, was never under Ottoman rule, had only a brief colonial period (1911-56 ), and the present Alaouite dynasty has ruled since the 1600s. The first two statements and to some extent the third are also true of Oman, and the ruling Al Bu Said dynasty has ruled since 1749. Both have historical depth, national identity, and dynastic legitimacy working for them. Moroccan Sultans and, more recently, Kings have long been called "amir al-mu'minin" (commander of the faithful), a traditional title of Muslim caliphs, and have historical religious leadership claims.

The other monarchies have differing claims on legitimacy. Most of the rulers of the Arabian Peninsula, other than Oman, emerged from local ruling families (in the Saudi case, local rulers in the Najd, but with alliance with the Wahhabi religious establishment). Many of the families have roots in the 1700s, often under British protection during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Jordan's Hashemites have an impeccable descent from the Prophet and were hereditary Sharifs of Mecca, but only achieved political rule in the 20th century, under British patronage, in the Hijaz, (briefly) Syria, Iraq and Jordan. Today they cling only to Jordan.

It is no coincidence that Bahrain, where a Sunni family rules a Shi‘ite majority, has been most unstable during the present upheavals, dependent on Saudi intervention. Other states (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Dubai) have Shi‘ite citizens but in the minority. Moroccan Kings have long finessed the Arab-Berber split in Morocco by at various times portraying both identities (many Kings, including Hassan II, took both Arab and Berber wives). The Sultan of Oman is an Ibadi so the country's historic majority, though increasingly eclipsed by Sunnis, share some identification with the ruler.

So legitimacy is a factor. So is the ability of the oil states to buy off their populace. And so to some extent is the fact that in Jordan and Morocco at least, there are enough of the trappings of a constitutional monarchy to allow the King to deflect blame to a Prime Minister (as Jordan tends to do) or to allow the opposition a role (as in the creation of an Islamist PJD-dominated ministry in Morocco). Of course these may prove to be temporary solutions, but they've worked so far.

If you were expecting profound answers or theoretical ones, ask some political scientist. I'm a historian and I examine the context without trying to fit the facts to some Procrustean theoretical bed. (Sorry, political scientists, forgive the zinger.) But I thought I'd leave you with my ruminations on the matter, though with no answers.

The Wilson Center's "The Islamists Are Coming"

The Woodrow Wilson Center has a new guide, The Islamists are Coming: Who They Really Are, edited by Robin Wright and written by a star-studded array of experts,* and providing a useful reference and guide; and to make things even better, it's all available online.

*Wright and Olivier Roy on general subjects, Samer Shehata and Khalil Anani on Egypt; Christopher Alexander on Tunisia; Marial Omar on Libya; David Ottaway on Algeria; Thomas Pierret on Syria; Nathan Brown on Palestine; Abdesalam Maghraoui on Morocco; Jillian Schwedler on Jordan; Nicholas Blanford on Lebanon; Leslie Campbell on Yemen; Omar Taspinar on Turkey.

Rami Khouri on the Baghdad Summit

Tomorrow's Arab League SAummit in Baghdad will be a showcase moment for post-occupation Iraq, but despite its focus on Syria and the importance of the moment following a year of dramatic change in the Arab world, it's a rare observer who gets excited over Arab Summits. Even the once-dependable entertainment value once provided by the late Mu‘ammar al-Qadhafi, with his penchant for denouncing his hosts, attacking the Saudi King, and making outrageous statements is no more, and missed, I'm sure, by none of the surviving attendees.

But one commentator who can usually be counted on for intelligent comment is Rami Khouri, in "Four Arab Worlds Will Meet in Baghdad," (differentiated by the effects of the Arab Awakening on them), so read what he has to say. I probably won't post on the Summit again unless something actually happens, which would be precedent-shattering in its own right.

A Post in Lieu of the End-of-Year Retrospective I Probably Won't Write

Sorry, I just can't resist printing this picture yet again.

This is the time of year when publications, newspapers, websites, etc, all do their "looking back on 2011" retrospectives. Does anybody actually read those? I don't, though I've written a few in my day. I'm on vacation this week; why should I write something even I don't particularly want to read?

You know what happened. Whether you called it "the Arab Spring," " the Arab Awakening," or "Why are My Loyal Loving Citizens Baying for my Scalp?" (if you were a head of state), it happened, and is mostly still happening. So far only one dead head of state, Qadhafi, but lots of dead revolutionaries, especially in Libya and Syria. It's an unfinished business.  Will Egypt's revolution end in revolutionary progress, Islamist regression, military rule, or not with a bang but a whimper? Damned if I know. Will Bashar al-Asad survive? I wouldn't want to sell him a long term life insurance policy, but who can say for sure? Will Salih ever actually leave Yemen?

Now, I think, while avoiding a "Major Stories of 2011" retrospective you won't read anyway,  I may do a collection of some of the most iconic photos of the year, but as for a retrospective, it's all in the archive. I may even list some of my own favorite posts of the year, which are mostly the historical ones. And after January 1 I may give you a summary of what the most popular posts of the year by number of pageviews were. But I don't think I'll relive the year in detail, since who needs to relive what we're still living?

I do note many changes in theme, by looking at my labels/topics list (officially "Categories" over there on the lower right). Although the sexual harassment and abuse of women is a notorious and longstanding problem in the Middle East, and the label has 12 posts in it, every single one of them is from 2011. That's not because the problem arose in 2011 for the first time, but because the revolutionary fervor and the presence of men and women together in the angry streets drove it into the forefront of our attention. Good. Women need to scream about it and men need to stop their denial and hear what they're saying. The Arab revolutions have brought such issues to the forefront, even as they have empowered the Islamists whose views are at odds with the young revolutionaries but whose presence in the streets helped bring down the old regimes.

This rollercoaster ride has just begun, I suspect. I'll talk more about it in the new year of course. Meanwhile, hang on for the ride.

Agha and Malley: a Somber Take on Arab Spring

Arab Spring, though it's now moving into Fall, is still a work in progress. Hussein Agha and Robert Malley in the New York Review of Books offer a somber, somewhat pessimistic assessment of where things go from here, calling it "The Arab Counterrevolution." A tip of the hat to The Arabist for the link, and for his comment that he hopes for a more optimistic outcome.

A Study That Goes Where Angels Fear to Tread

Most of us are aware of the sort of heavily funded study that comes out telling us something everyone already knew, and resent it if they had more funding than we do, but sometimes someone genuinely produces a study which, if fairly intuitive in its content, does say what most are reluctant to say, does go where angels fear to tread. The Population Reference Bureau has just come out with a study entitled, "Facts of Life: Youth Sexuality and Reproductive Health in the Middle East and North Africa," by Farzaneh Roudi-Fahimi and Shereen El Feki. The link goes to the press release/summary page; the whole report (PDF) is available here.

No one familiar with the region will fail to recognize the problem. A fifth of the Middle Eastern population is between 15 and 24; in many countries half the population is under 25; in most, it's at least under 30. The phenomenon of "Arab Spring" is in part the result of the frustrations of young people who do not remember their previous President or King; who are educated beyond any of their forebears but despite university degrees have few job prospects; who, in a society where youthful marriage was once universal, must defer marriage because they cannot afford an apartment or setting up on their own. Everyone knows this, and everyone also knows, but few talk openly about, the fact that deferred marriage in a society in which sex outside of marriage remains a major taboo adds an additional layer of frustration. An increasing religious conservatism in the past few decades has actually closed outlets that may have existed a generation or more ago.

I'm pleased to see that two female scholars of Middle Eastern background have been willing to go there.  They are not preaching promiscuity or advocating a Middle Eastern Woodstock; rather they are noting that there is a woeful lack of education among young people, especially young women, to the extent that even the onset of one's first period comes as a crisis. All this seems obvious enough, and given the constraints of a conservative society, it is probably better to advocate greater education rather than greater freedom, though the two may not be unrelated.

Unfortunately, the title itself may prove more polarizing than it should. Religious conservatives will oppose the very idea of the study, or portray it as an attempt to intrude Western mores into the Muslim world; many young women will shy away from the subject altogether, considering it taboo; and sadly, too many single young men will snigger and try to find "the good parts" of the report. (There aren't any.) Over this and the coming years, however, we are going to see a lot more discussion of the role of the youth in not only the Arab revolutions but the economic and social problems that confront the region. This study reminds us what we all once knew: that for the adolescent and young adult prior to marriage, social and economic issues are not the only, or even perhaps the central, issue on their minds.

Revolution and Counter-Revolution, Then and Now

Last week my posts were mainly reactive due to my preoccupation with the destruction in my home town of Joplin, Missouri. This week I want to return to some analysis of my own, at a bit more length.

Depending on which op-ed you read, Arab Spring is either a crushing disappointment, a movement betrayed by the old entrenched establishments, or a youth movement co-opted by radical Islamists. It is fueling sectarianism (Egypt, Syria) and anti-Americanism, and it's all the fault of either Barack Obama (either because of his sinister plotting against friendly regimes or his apathy about supporting old allies) or the Muslim Brotherhood. (Or Iran or Israel if you want to get out into the really complex conspiracy theories.)

Personally, I think this is one of those blind-men-and-the-elephant situations, in which analysts with various agendas see only those aspect of the larger whole that reinforce their pre-existing prejudices. Some aspects of each assertion reflect reality, but the whole is still greater than the sum of its parts. It's not over, and no one can see the farther shore, not yet. However much the 24/7 news cycle demands instant gratification, real life doesn't work that way. These are still early days. Ben Ali fell in January and Mubarak fell in February (neither of which is spring, by the way), so people have been wondering why no despots fell in March, April, or May, and now already we're in June. So perhaps it was less an Arab Spring than a Winter of Discontent, now played out?

Actually, I'm sure Mu‘ammar al-Qadhafi isn't sleeping well, what with the NATO air strikes, and I doubt if ‘Ali ‘Abdullah Salih or Bashar al-Asad are as confident as they once were. If anything, more people are dying each day in Libya, Yemen, and Syria than in the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, but repressive censorship makes it harder to document. Bahrain's uprising was crushed, but only through foreign intervention.

There's an old saying, "Never trust a generalization, including this one." A corollary could be, "Never rely too much on historical parallels, including the one I'm about to draw." History does not repeat itself, though if we do not learn from it we may repeat its mistakes. It's also been said that history doesn't repeat itself, but historians do; I may be a bit guilty of that here. But while I'm on the theme I should also note the quote attributed to Mark Twain (but is it his? I can't find a source): "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."

Now I've said before that for general historical parallels you have to go back to the early years of the post-World War I colonial era, where the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 and the Iraqi Revolution of 1920-21 against the British were the sort of largely leaderless grass-roots uprisings we've seen recently. Both, in fact, have always been called "uprisings" or "revolts" in British historical narratives. But both Egyptians and Iraqis call those events thawra or revolution, even though the British didn't leave right away. But Egypt did get (nominal, conditional) independence in 1922 and Iraq a decade later.

The other possible period of comparison is the period of the 1950s  and 1960s, when the wave of Arab nationalism spread, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser and the "Revolution" in Egypt in 1952. The quotes are there because like most of the other "revolutions" of the era, that was a khaki revolution. While it did result in some genuine social change — land reform, nationalizations, and the like — it was really a military coup with a social agenda, not a revolution from the street. For years, Egyptians and other Arabs have argued over whether the Egyptian revolution of 1952 and its analogues in Iraq (1958, 1963, 1968, unless you want to start in 1936), Syria (frequent between 1949-1971), Yemen (1962 and periodically to 1978) and Libya (1969), plus similar events in Sudan (multiple, 1958-1989) and elsewhere, should be described as thawra (revolution) or inqilab (coup, literally pretty much "overthrow".) [Semantic aside: in Iran, the Islamic Revolution of 1979 is routinely called inqilab, due to some semantic shift when the word moved from Arabic to Persian.]

The period of the "revolutions" of the 1950s and 1960s was famously defined by the late Malcolm Kerr as The Arab Cold War.

There was a clear dichotomy between the "revolutionary" (whether they were implementing social change or just consolidating personal power) regimes and the "counter-revolutionary" regimes of the Kings, Sultans, Amirs, and Imam (in Yemen) who resisted them.  While it did get confusing at times (especially in Yemen), it was generally clear who the "revolutionaries" were and who the reactionaries were.

The same is true in today's revolutions, but for different reasons. This time the revolutions are not in khaki; they're in cyberspace. They're not young military officers; they're just the frustrated young, of all social and economic classes. Whether they, unlike their khaki-wearing predecessors, can actually deliver on their dreams remains to be proven. This is, I think, something quite different, but there is one common factor: the common enemies.

Saudi Arabia and Israel are as discomfited by the Arab Spring as they were by the Nasserite wave of the 50s and 60s, and while they may agree on little else (though if truth were fully told, they probably agree on more than you think [remember the Dany Ayalon-Prince Turki handshake?]), the two agree that Change in the Arab World is Bad.

And it needs hardly be said that the old regimes that are under attack now were themselves mostly the "revolutionaries" of the 1950s and 1960s. Mubarak was a junior pilot in 1952 but became part of its legacy; Qadhafi led the Libyan "revolution" in 1969 before he became the Picture of Dorian Gray, and Salih of Yemen led his coup in 1978, again, like the others, before the overwhelming majority of his people were born. The old revolutionaries become the Bonapartist dictators opposed by the new revolutionaries.

But I do believe that Arab Spring has deeper roots than the khaki "revolutions" of the Nasser era. I think this is a real, grass-roots movement, and while the young intelligentsia with their cellphones and Twitter accounts are the vanguard, the peasants and workers aren't far behind. The role of the labor movement in Egypt — not the official labor movement but the independent unions who were striking for a year before January 25 was dreamt of — may be the untold story of the Egyptian revolution. Someday we will have a clearer picture of what is going on; but the op-ed writers know no more than I or the participants themselves what happens next. What I'm sure of is, it ain't over till it's over.

Wisdom from Fouad Ajami(!)

Professor Fouad Ajami ( a neighbor of ours since Johns Hopkins SAIS is just across our back alley from MEI) has, in recent decades, been something of a darling of the neocons, since he has long been a critic of certain aspects of the Arab and Islamic worlds. In the neocon pantheon of favorite Middle East experts he hasn't ranked far below Bernard Lewis. But watching him on CNN in recent weeks, his enthusiasm for the revolutionary fervor sweeping the Arab world has been both unmistakable and pretty close to my own. His New York Times op-ed piece, "How the Arabs Turned Shame into Liberty," even contains the following:

There is no overstating the importance of the fact that these Arab revolutions are the works of the Arabs themselves. No foreign gunboats were coming to the rescue, the cause of their emancipation would stand or fall on its own. Intuitively, these protesters understood that the rulers had been sly, that they had convinced the Western democracies that it was either the tyrants’ writ or the prospect of mayhem and chaos.

Amen. Hardly the old neocon argument that we must bring democracy to the Middle East. I'm not sure what the neocons will think of Ajami's recent comments, but I find them refreshing.

Pundit Like it's 1989

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

— Brutus in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Acr IV, Scene 3

I wanted to reflect for a moment about the dilemma facing all of us Middle East "experts," pundits, and talking heads. I wish I had phone numbers of some of the history grad students I knew who were specialists on Russian and Eastern European history. (We tended to meet in Byzantine Empire history classes. I actually took four semesters of Byzantine history, two taught by Georgian Prince Cyril Toumanoff, about whom I must write someday.) As I try to field questions from the media and formulate my own thinking on what's going on now, I keep realizing that everything I've learned from experience in the past 40 years may no longer be valid. There is a dynamic here that has never existed before. I don't understand the dynamic. Ben Ali and Mubarak clearly don't. Maybe King ‘Abdullah II has a clue, since he's trying to stay in front of the tsunami (or the "Tunisnami" as someone has dubbed it).

Although the Solidarity Movement in Poland had led the way, the collapse of Eastern Europe and, soon after, the Soviet Union itself, stunned observers, the governments themselves, and no doubt the protesters. It was not the state but the Communist Monolith that withered away, or simply evaporated. The fall of the Berlin Wall, some say, was inadvertent. The East German Government issued a contingency statement the Politburo had not authorized. (The most dramatic bureaucratic screwup in history?) Not just a wall but an Iron Curtain fell. And,for the most part, it was bloodless, unless your name was Ceausescu. (Mubarak's "I will die in Egypt": be careful what you wish for.)

1989 was forecast by no one. It was impossible, unprecedented, a psychedelic fantasy. The results were imperfect (Belarus and some of the "stans" and the Caucasus). But all the existing analytic paradigms collapsed overnight. The dynamic was changed. People were empowered.

Pundits at the time raised the question of why it didn't spread to the Arab World.

Tunisia was an outlier, a solid little Arab country but very much its own case. Egypt is the beating heart of Arab nationalism, birthplace of civilization, mother of the world. Tunisia was Poland; if it happens, Egypt is the fall of the Berlin Wall at a minimum. It's the mother lode.

Outside of my post on the 1919 Revolution/uprising, the fall of the Shah of Iran is perhaps the best analog. A man seemingly secure fell quickly, though not so quickly as what is happening now. Obviously whether we decide this is a "Facebook revolution" or something quite different, there are going to be elements of it that are entirely new.

As for exportability, revolutions can occur without communication among revolutionary groups, as the success of one spreads to another country. There is something exhilarating about real revolution (think of Wordsworth's "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/But to be young was very heaven"). The American Revolution had a direct and organic effect on France in 1789. The wave of revolutions that swept Europe in 1848 is another example, as is the spread of the Russian Revolution of 1917 to many places, including Germany a bit, in 1918-1919. The domino collapse of Communism is perhaps the most apt, and clearly most recent, example.

What happens next? Don't ask us Middle East experts. We've never seen anything like this. The dynamic is new, and different, and not a reliable guide because we don't understand it yet. Bliss is it in this dawn to be alive.

New PM for Jordan

King ‘Abdullah II has named a new Prime Minister, Ma‘rouf Bakhit, to replace Samir Rifai and preside over a reform government. Whether real reforms ensue or not, at least the King is seeking to be perceived as taking action in response to demonstrations, to get out ahead of the wave. Will it be enough? I think in the present circumstances, analysts are as confused as Arab leaders about the speed and nature of the tiger Arab leaders find themselves riding.

Taking Stock Ten Days Later

Ten days after the January 14 flight of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the analyses are continuing. Like several I've already linked to, the newer assessments are more thoughtful and nuanced than some of those produced in the first flush of victory. Steven Heydemann has a useful piece today at Foreign Policy's Middle East channel, which is worth your time.

And among the analysts and reporters flocking to Tunisia we find Issandr El Amrani, The Arabist, who's going to be contributing periodic analyses from the country. The first post has some interesting points, and I look forward to his forthcoming series.

Dunne on Tunisia

I'll let you start the day with some Dunne commentary instead of Dunn commentary: Michele Dunne of Arab Reform Bulletin has a fine, concise, well-stated look at "What Tunisia Proved — And Disproved — About Political Change in the Arab World."

Anything I could add would be redundant, so just click over and read it. It's also good that her piece appears as a column in Al-Masry al-Youm's English edition, which means at least some Egyptians will be reading it.